Connecticut ACM has managed to hold two face-to-face meetings in the past 7 months. In September, Citizens TV in New Haven hosted several PEG people for lunch and a tour of their facility (recently converted from a veterinary hospital). Over lunch they discussed their mutual problem of insufficient funding and how to approach the legislature. Trying to recover the PEGPETIA fund (the fund for capital expenses that eased the 2007 loss of the franchise renewal process) had very limited success in past years. The sad state of Connecticut’s budget overshadows everything legislative.
Another direction to take is increasing the per subscriber fee, which provides funds only for the official Community Access Providers (34 of 111 PEG operations in CT). The per sub is set annually by the regulatory agency, ranges from $5-12/year, and is usually adjusted only according the Consumer Price Index. It wouldn’t help every PEG, but at least some would get something.
However, that idea was dropped when the state public affairs channel, Connecticut Network (CT-N), advanced a bill to make themselves more like a PEG station, funded by a new per subscriber fee instead of an allocation from the state General Fund. CTacm was told that CT-N consulted FCC staff on the question of additional funding, were told that nothing in federal law blocked this. NECTA opposed the bill because the new per sub constituted another tax on subscribers. Some legislators on the committee have accepted this “fee = tax” argument, which will be a problem for some other ideas being floated to help PEG finances. The bill—amended to excuse satellite TV from providing funds—received a joint favorable (but not unanimous) vote out of the Govt. Administration & Elections committee. SB 104 may have appeal in the full legislature and with the governor, since it returns $3.2 million to the General fund.
In January—before this year’s short legislative session started—an even larger group convened at Newington Community TV, a non-CAP running 2 town-specific channels with only volunteer staff. We talked shop, more legislative ideas, and Frontier TV— whether they would be able to improve the U-Verse system they bought from AT&T in 2014, whether they had visited more than one PEG since then.
To our surprise, the Energy & Technology committee raised their own bill to restore a year’s worth ($4.2 million) of PEGPETIA money. However it includes a section aimed at allowing one town to manage a G channel separate from its regional Community Access Provider. This has created divisions among the PEGs who had been united just two months before. Testimony varied—all supporting restoration of the capital funds but either ignoring or opposing the offending section. The bill was unanimously raised intact out of Energy & Technology and referred to Appropriations. Because it would take money away from the troubled state budget, it is unlikely to go farther.